Seattle Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald and NBC Sports host Maria Taylor found themselves standing together on the Super Bowl 60 stage Sunday night in Santa Clara, Calif., both at the peak of their respective professions.
Taylor had the honor of presenting the Lombardi Trophy to Seahawks brass, including Macdonald, after Seattle’s dominant 29-13 Super Bowl win. She had already become the first Black woman to host the official Super Bowl pregame show, and was now the first to host the trophy presentation ceremony. Macdonald had just won his first championship.
It was the culmination of a journey for both of them that began years earlier at Centennial High School in Roswell, Ga., where the two were student-athletes at the same time in the mid-2000s.
Just two kids from Centennial High School that made it to the Super Bowl! 🏆 pic.twitter.com/kBAFbStOWd
— Maria Taylor (@MariaTaylor) February 9, 2026
Even then, leadership and the promise of something larger to come were evident in Macdonald, who played football and baseball, and Taylor, a standout in basketball and volleyball.
“In both of them, absolutely, their teachers saw potential,” then-Centennial athletic director Mike Cloy told The Athletic. “Their coaches did, too. Everybody realized what great young people they were and the possibilities of greatness after high school.”
Macdonald was not an All-American and did not play football beyond high school, but the 2006 Centennial graduate became the Knights’ guiding force. When his senior season was cut short by neck and knee injuries, he stayed close to the team, helping install defenses and absorbing the game from a different angle as he patrolled the sidelines.
It was an early education in defensive mastery, which eventually carried him to the University of Georgia (which Taylor also attended), the Baltimore Ravens and the Michigan Wolverines.
On Sunday, the 38-year-old became the third-youngest head coach to win a Super Bowl — and the first whose primary responsibility is calling defensive plays.
In an era dominated by offensive innovators, Macdonald’s devotion to defense was forged early. The “smallish, about 150-pound linebacker,” as Cloy described him, did not play at an elite level, but he had a feel for leadership and a deep desire to understand the game.
“He was a true leader,” Cloy said. “He loved the game of football, and even though he was hard at times, he was still very much involved in being a leader and being a positive influence for the rest of the team.”
“We always knew Mike was going to be special,” Billy Nicholson, Macdonald’s baseball coach at Centennial, told The Athletic. “He had this incredible, instinctive ability to lead even at such a young age. It came so natural to him. Heck, some of the team speeches he would give got us coaches wanting to go out and play the game.”
The best high school athlete from Centennial standing on that stage Sunday night, though, was Taylor.
In an NBC segment from 2024, Taylor and Macdonald sat down to reflect on their shared past and the principles guiding Macdonald’s first season as an NFL head coach.
Mike Macdonald’s coaching journey took him to Michigan, where he was defensive coordinator in 2021. (Junfu Han / Imagn Images)
“Maria was way cooler than I was,” he said, smiling as he looked at a cardboard poster filled with photos from their high school days. “Just an absolute champion.”
“Look at that, ‘most athletic,’” he added, pointing to the superlative Taylor earned in her 2005 senior yearbook.
“Where’s your ‘most athletic’?” Taylor asked back.
“Not on here,” the Seahawks coach admitted, laughing.
Like Macdonald, Taylor was a two-sport athlete at Centennial. Unlike him, she dominated.
Her ambition, she wrote at the time, was to become the first female president within 10 years, but her most immediate gifts were on display on the court. Taylor was a Fulton County scholar athlete of the year in basketball, a three-time all-region selection in volleyball and a member of the 2004 USA Volleyball Junior National A2 team.
Those performances carried her to the University of Georgia, where she played both sports from 2005-09. While Macdonald was beginning his coaching career at Cedar Shoals High School as a running backs and linebackers coach while a student at Georgia, Taylor was becoming one of the volleyball program’s most consistent forces, earning All-SEC honors in every season she wore red and black.
Two Double Dawgs were representing UGA on the biggest stage in football last night.
Maria Taylor (ABJ ’09, MBA ’13), NBC sportscaster, and Mike Macdonald (BBA ’10, MS ’13), Seattle Seahawks head coach.
We’re proud of the Bulldogs who represent UGA on a global stage! pic.twitter.com/b6kqEXugdc
— UGA (@universityofga) February 9, 2026
Taylor left Georgia with a broadcast news degree and began a career that took her to ESPN, then NBC, and ultimately to the Super Bowl stage on Sunday night.
Macdonald, meanwhile, faced a life choice after graduating with a finance degree from Georgia in 2010. He could chase his ambition in coaching wherever it led, or choose the safer path into business.
“I have a passion here,” MacDonald said in the NBC segment. “Am I going to be kicking myself when I’m 40 if I didn’t give myself a shot? … At some point, I just said, ‘You know what, I’m just going to go for it. I love this thing too much.’ That’s where it all started.”
Macdonald started as a graduate assistant on Mark Richt’s Georgia staff in 2010. He joined the Baltimore Ravens in 2014 as a coaching intern on John Harbaugh’s staff, working his way up before joining Harbaugh’s brother, Jim, as defensive coordinator at Michigan in 2021. He bounced back to the Ravens a year later, before landing the head gig in Seattle for the 2024 season.
One year later, he was on the Super Bowl stage, accepting a trophy from Taylor, two Centennial Knights crossing paths once again, this time at the pinnacle for both.